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WHILE YOU WERE WORKING: Labor released a new, mediocre jobs report … Apple released a new, mediocre iPad … And HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a new, mediocre defense of the Obamacare launch. Happy Tuesday! Pro Report starts now…

RT @DonaldTrump: “Have time to waste? Go to the ObamaCare website.”

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THE BIG STORY IS THE OBAMACARE BLAME GAME, via POLITICO’s Jennifer Haberkorn and Jessica Meyers: “The Obamacare blame game is in full swing. A day after President Barack Obama acknowledged the dismal rollout of HealthCare.gov and promised quick repairs, the companies working on the site indicated that they’re not going down without a fight. Republicans on Tuesday kept up their attack on the troubled launch.” Three developments on that front, via Haberkorn and Meyers:

1) “Sebelius announced HHS was bringing in more help for the HealthCare.gov website, including former acting OMB chief Jeff Zients, a veteran of top management firms, as well as ‘additional experts and specialists drawn from within government, our contractors and industry, including veterans of top Silicon Valley companies.’ Her statement didn’t give details or identities. The administration’s Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and some presidential Innovation Fellows are also involved in the repair effort.”

2) Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill that would require weekly reports on the exchanges.

3) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on FOX News: “How are you going to go after people next year using the IRS to punish them if the thing you’re forcing them to buy isn’t available for them? ... “I think what they’re worried about is increased criticism of the law if they open it up and show people all the ugly things going on in the implementation. … The fact is there is no transparency. They’re not sharing accurate numbers as to how well or not well it’s working, how many people have been able to enroll and receive it or not. They’re not being transparent, which is just adding more and more doubt to this entire process.”

POP QUIZ: WHO SAID IT? “I think the shutdown was so magnificent, run beautifully.” Answer at the end…

THIS IS PRO REPORT, still not SportsCenter. But A-Rod hit a home run (sorta)! He hired real-life Olivia Pope (sorry, Judy!) Lanny Davis. Davis earned his stripes working for the Clinton administration during the impeachment saga. He’s since repped wounded clients like Penn State (my alma mater) during the post-Sandusky era… WaPo the profile: http://wapo.st/1cSO2OD … Back to work. I’m Kevin Cirilli. Connect with me on Twitter: @ kevcirilli; email: kcirilli@politico.com. Tired? It’s only Tuesday. Pick up the pace…

THERE ARE 1,000 CRACKS IN THE CAPITOL… as our Seung Min Kim reports: “The U.S. Capitol’s iconic dome will be wrapped in scaffolding for two years as it undergoes its first thorough renovation in a half-century to fix more than 1,000 cracks and other problems. … A white doughnut-shaped canopy will be installed in the Rotunda to protect the public from the repairs going on outside. The budget for the overall project is $59.55 million.” http://politi.co/1a5mtmB

… BUT HARDLY A DENT IN UNEMPLOYMENT, via me: “A new jobs report released on Tuesday showed the economic recovery continues to be sluggish and many economists warn that the constant fiscal fights in Washington only threaten to make the situation worse. The U.S. economy added 148,000 jobs in September while the unemployment rate dropped slightly to 7.2 percent, federal economists reported Tuesday. The report fell short of expectations — economist surveyed by Bloomberg had estimated the number of jobs added would come in at 185,000…

“The September jobs report was delayed by the government shutdown because most of the staff at the Bureau of Labor Statistics were furloughed by the time it was originally set to be released on Oct. 4.

Analysts say that the shutdown could cloud the value of the next two monthly reports, meaning that a clear picture of the jobs market may not appear until the December report is released in January.” http://politi.co/1h654LV

— WHAT IT MEANS, via me: “Washington’s latest budget brinkmanship and Tuesday’s lackluster jobs report has analysts pushing back into next year their estimates of when the Federal Reserve will ease off its stimulus policies. The uncertainty over the economic impact of the government shutdown, along with the tepid increase in hiring, is sure to be a major theme when the Fed policy making committee meets next week as well as when it gathers for the final time this year in December.” http://politico.pro/1eHctyV

BOOKER WATCH: The senator-elect celebrity hired Washington veteran Louisa Terrell as his chief of staff — a clear signal that he’s looking to make waves inside the Beltway. Terrell is Facebook’s current director of public policy. More via Maggie Haberman: http://politi.co/1eHdAid

TODAY IN HISTORY, via The AP: “On Oct. 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a nationally broadcast address in which he publicly revealed the presence of Soviet-built missile bases under construction in Cuba and announced a quarantine of all offensive military equipment being shipped to the Communist island nation.”

— HE SAID: “The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission. Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world.”

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TODAY’S TOP POLICY NEWS:

JPMORGAN’S PENALTY SILVER LINING? TAX WRITE-OFFS: “JPMorgan Chase has struck a tentative deal with the Justice Department to pay a record $13 billion over dodgy mortgage products — but the biggest U.S. bank may be able to slash that bill by paying Uncle Sam less in taxes. Details of the pact are now being finalized, but it is expected to include $9 billion paid to the government and $4 billion in relief for wronged customers. The silver lining for JPMorgan: The bank will likely be able to write off a good chunk of those funds by calling them business expenses.” Full story via Kim Dixon and Brian Faler: http://politico.pro/17entV5

— TRANSLATION: They’re going to get to write off a good chunk of the fine.

TFA MAKES BANK, via Pro Education’s Stephanie Simon: “A surge in federal and state grants and private donations helped Teach for America boost its endowment to $161 million and its net assets to $419 million for the fiscal year ending in September 2012, according to new tax documents filed with the IRS. Teach for America, widely known as TFA, took in nearly $307 million in revenue during the fiscal year, which left the nonprofit with a substantial surplus after expenditures of $251 million for the year. It ran a similar surplus the previous year. … Some politicians have pushed back, questioning why TFA needs to collect taxpayer funds given its healthy balance sheet.”

— WHY SO MUCH MONEY? “TFA spokeswoman Takirra Winfield declined to comment on why TFA continues to seek state and local funding. … [TFA Founder Wendy Kopp], who until recently served as co-CEO, received nearly $450,000 in compensation from TFA in fiscal year 2012, the tax records show. The organization had at least 10 other employees who also received more than $200,000 in compensation. TFA’s net asset balance of $419 million was a 20 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. Its endowment balance soared 37 percent in fiscal 2012.” Full story: http://politico.pro/Hdv9vg

— FLASHBACK: Ex-TFAer spills all to The Atlantic: “Five weeks of training was not enough to prepare me for a room of 20 unruly elementary-schoolers.” http://bit.ly/1ahD2s4

DELAYED: YOUR TAX REFUND NEXT YEAR, Rachael Bade emails in: “It’s totally not as sexy as the recent tea party scandal plaguing the IRS, but the tax-collecting agency today announced that the government shutdown has set them back in their 2014 tax filing season preparations. The agency says the 2014 tax filing season — which was supposed to begin Jan. 21 — won’t actually start until between Jan. 28 and Feb. 4. That means your tax refund (if you get one!) could be delayed about two weeks. Plan accordingly.”

TECH TEAMS UP ON NSA: “Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech powerhouses have mounted a quiet new lobbying push around government surveillance laws as they seek to influence potential congressional reforms to controversial NSA programs. Thrust into the spotlight as a result of Edward Snowden’s leaks, these industry leaders historically haven’t voiced loud support for restraining the NSA’s legal authorities to collect data. But many tech firms’ third-quarter lobbying reports, filed Monday night and totaling millions of dollars, demonstrate Silicon Valley is devoting more of its bandwidth to an emerging surveillance debate that could affect many companies’ bottom lines.”

“The companies’ aim with the new D.C. effort isn’t entirely clear. Silicon Valley to date hasn’t pushed to restrict the NSA’s ability to reach into the Internet’s backbone for foreign suspects’ communications. Instead, the tech companies mostly have made the case for more transparency — the need for better numbers and clearer documents that show how often the government seeks data from them and when. But continued revelations about U.S. surveillance have raised the potential for new regulation of Internet companies in Europe and beyond. That’s causing headaches for tech companies that store and swap data overseas. Any changes to U.S. surveillance law consequently could have broad business impacts, and Silicon Valley is closely monitoring the congressional action.” Full story via Tony Romm: http://politico.pro/1gC3OlZ

GOOGLE GLASS: ARMY EDITION, via Pro Defense’s Philip Ewing: “The Army wants to wire its soldiers into high-tech networks to give them better information on the battlefield, perhaps by using special eyepieces, tablets — even Android mobile phones. Sometimes, though, soldiers just don’t want to be wired in. … Engineers wanted troops to be able to see where they were, the locations of enemies and other important data while also keeping their eyes up and their hands free. The problem was, besides costs and technical challenges, soldiers hated it.” http://politico.pro/HdaF5E

ON TAP FOR TOMORROW:

— Obama will meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in hopes of easing relations that have been tense since the U.S. caught Osama bin Laden hiding out in that nation. Expect it to be awkward. Vice President Joe Biden will also attend.

— Then, in the evening, Biden will give a keynote to the Kennedy Forum on community mental health at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will also be talking at the mental health awareness event.

— At 9 a.m., Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will speak about higher education — and how to pay for it — at the Financial Literacy and Education Commission.

ONE MORE THING: “Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.” — Dale Carnegie, arguably the father of the self-help genre.

**A message from POWERJobs: New jobs on our radar this week: Policy Analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton, VP, Business Development at SAIC and Senior Government Relations Adviser at SHRM.

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Authors:

About The Author

Kevin Cirilli is a financial services reporter for POLITICO Pro. Prior to that, he worked on the breaking news team. Before joining POLITICO, he helped cover the Jerry Sandusky scandal for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and Philadelphia Magazine. At Penn State University, he was a recipient of the Damon M. Chappie Award for Investigative Journalism and was campus editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Collegian. Cirilli was a Pulliam Fellow of Journalism at The Arizona Republic. He grew up in suburban Philadelphia's Delaware County. In his free time, he enjoys eating Philly food and running.